Not one but two major upgrades hit the Mac VJ market this month. Aside from Livid Union 1.5, there’s Modul8 V2. Some serious power features: there’s audio input triggering as well as standard MIDI learn, a preview panel, special techniques for saving your set without taking a performance hit, and tons of special filters and […]

Thanks to everyone who’s writing in about VJ Day. It’s funny, conventional wisdom is that musicians don’t care about VJing, but here among the hip technorati of CDM, of course, things are different. And with VJing moving out of the “psychedelia” area into a range of aesthetics and styles, I expect you’ll hear more soon. […]

Cris from plasq writes us with a link to a fascinating interview featuring Clint Bajakian, Senior Music Supervisor for Sony Computer Entertainment of America. Winner of 2003 Game Audio Network Guild awards for Best Interactive Score and Music of the Year , Clint has been doing audio in the game industry for over 13 years. […]

Chris of Pixelsumo alerts us to the Beatbox “physical programmable drum machine” at the RCA show in the UK. (see additional commentary at MusicThing) So, is this the future of drum machines? Of course not. An Akai-style sampler has a physical interface, too, and it’s more usable than these. But after a slow start, watch […]

Remember the golden age of HyperCard, when we dreamed of software as something users would create themselves, interactively? The folks at Sibelius, the notation software company, have come up with an Xtra for Macromedia Director MX/2004 that lets you add a full-featured custom sequencer / score editor to your Director apps. You can record from […]

For those of you not on the Cycling `74 mailing list, the future is now: the Lemur touchscreens are on their way. So if you thought this would never be a real product, think again. Cycling tells us that the new machines “are out of the factory” and after final testing will be in San […]

Using conductive inks and ordinary pencils, the CD Sequencer lets you remix CDs right from the packaging. The circuitry is drawn onto printed postcards; the circuitry measures change in resistance created by a pencil. Plug it into the computer via USB, and you’re ready to remix. Cool, but what I’m not clear on is how […]

Breaking news from our knob beat department — remember the Reflex Audio Sonia, which I looked at when it was announced in March? This knob-laden MIDI box is back, it’s shipping, and it’s cheaper: US$109 for 22 user memories, or $129 for 44. There’s no USB, but that shaves more off the price, and you […]

Sorry for the late notice, but just found this myself: tonight 6-8 pm Eastern USA time, you can jam along with other online musicians via the Web-based instrument PitchWeb. Let us know if you try it, because up until moments ago I knew nothing about this. This doubles as a virtual book launch party, to […]

Pierre Hilaire writes: Thank you for taking my e-mail. I am a Recording Engineer who has [Cakewalk] SONAR Producer Edition Software. Can I Master songs on SONAR? I know the ideal mastering tool is Pro Tools, but how about SONAR? This sounded like an important opportunity to correct some common misinformation — namely, that Pro […]